Phylipa turned 70 on Monday. That’s right, an April Fool’s baby. But she as born after midday when the ‘fooling’ aspect of the day traditionally ends.
Years ago, we abandoned the charade of individual presents. No novelty socks, no scented candles destined for the back of a cupboard. Instead, we chose things that we’d actually use and suit us both – a course, a piece of equipment, a mutual indulgence that spared us the disappointment of mismatched expectations.
As a teenager, Phylipa was top of her class, annoyingly brilliant. As an adult, she ran a ski school in Austria because, naturally, standing on two polished planks while hurtling down a mountain is a perfectly reasonable career choice.
In the summer months she brought indoor fitness to the UK with the PT Bouncer, a mini trampoline that became an instrument of toned enlightenment. Forty years on, we still use ours regularly.
Four children later, she realised that if she was going to do this mothering thing, she might as well aim for competence. That sort of self-awareness is rare. Most of us just fumble through and hope the children turn out to be employable.
That catalysed her reinvention, because one life is never enough. After divorcing her first husband, she she threw herself into therapy – Allergy & Nutrition, Holographic Repatterning, Birth Trauma, Human Design. She assembled an arsenal of learned and instinctive knowledge that made your average GP look like a medieval barber.
Phylipa and I first met in Hong Kong in the mid 1970s, then re-met in 1997, and by 1999, we were married. Together, we transformed her farmhouse in Gloucestershire into a natural health centre on ten acres of English Civil War territory, with a 1640s barn lovingly restored using only natural timbers, paints, and materials.
Patients arrived for therapy and often felt better just sitting in the barn, possibly because it smelled reassuringly of old wood and promise. Even the local GP’s occasionally referred difficult patients to her when their allopathic pills and potions didn’t do the job…..and she’d ‘fix’ them by dealing with the cause rather than the symptoms.
Therapists would consult her when other options failed. People begged her to write down her experiences. She tried. But writing, by her own admission, was a slow, plodding task – like swimming through molasses.
Breaking with tradition, and wondering what unusual present to get her for this special birthday occasion, I had my lightbulb moment.
I dug out her notes, reshaped them, and breathed life into them.
The result? Life In A Body: The Awakening. A book that might have never seen the light of day otherwise. And for this weekend, the ePub version is free to download. If you’re a Kindle user, grab a copy from your own Amazon account. A paperback version is there too (reduced to $9.99/£7.65 for the weekend) and a pdf file is available on our website (for £3.99 for this weekend after which the price goes back to £5.00)
Unfortunately Phylipa won’t be reading it. Sadly she can’t. The silent thief of Alzheimer’s crept in and took her words, her sharp edges, her once-undaunted cognition. I’d certainly not want to wake every day to an unfamiliar world, struggle with language and wonder which slipper goes on which foot.
And yet, here we are.
Whatever she needs in terms of support is what she’ll get from me. Nothing less. No negotiation. No compromise.
As someone pointed out to me recently, that’s what love looks like when it grows up.
And amidst the losses and heartaches, there is always hope. Hope that we can endure. Hope that we can adapt. Hope that even when the world turns strange, love remains a constant, unshaken thing.
Hope is stubborn like that. It refuses to go quietly. And sometimes, just sometimes, it changes everything. All we need to do is stand firmly in its way.
Graeme Dinnen
ResourcesForLife.net
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